Free and legal MP3 from Jolie Holland (rolling, deep-hearted music, enhanced by Ribot guitar)

“Palmyra” – Jolie Holland

I love the timeless, deep-hearted quality of the music here, as well as Holland’s fetchingly textured voice. Starting simply, with the acoustic guitar up front, the song picks up depth and punch when the drums and electric guitar kick in in full force, after about a minute. The electric guitarist is the masterly Marc Ribot, who plays with great invention and yet, somehow, without drawing any attention to himself. I suggest going back and listening to the song one time with the specific intention of focusing only on Ribot’s playing–not just his solo at around 1:55 but from beginning to end (and yes he actually is playing from almost the beginning, even as the acoustic guitar seems onstage alone). Although a wonderful experimental guitarist on his own, I find him particularly effective in this sort of ensemble work, in the context of a traditional-sounding song.

Beyond Ribot, one concrete element that adds to “Palmyra”‘s mysterious appeal, to my ears, is how Holland shifts the melody in the verse on and then off the first beat of the measure. You can hear this clearly at the beginning: the first two lines (beginning with “Only a few…” and “My little heart…”) are sung starting on the first beat of the measure; the next lines (starting with “You could tell…”) are sung beginning around the third beat of the measure, which creates more space between lines as well. The feel of the song settles into something deeper and yearnier, somehow, in the shift. And yet she does not do this the second time the verse comes around, which is the first time we hear it in the fuller band mode–she shifts the shift, as it were. It returns for the third verse. I have no idea precisely why but I do believe this sort of subliminal complexity enriches the listening experience. In other words: good song.

“Palmyra” can be found on Holland’s new CD, The Living and the Dead, due out this week on Anti Records. MP3 via Spinner. Jolie Holland was previously featured on Fingertips in April 2006.

Free and legal MP3:Your 33 Black Angels (concise, likable, hard-edged pop)

“New Song” – Your 33 Black Angels

Concise and good-natured while also flashing a bit of hard-edged sloppiness that makes it all the more likable. “New Song” is not only so concise it can’t be bothered with a title, it’s so concise that it pretty much uses the same central melody in both the verse and the chorus. It works musically because…well, who knows, actually. These things remain mysterious. No doubt it has something to do with how the rhythm speeds up in the chorus, and also—not to be underestimated—the rumbly, lower-register harmonies brought to singer Benji Kast’s slightly roughed-up tenor. But maybe the real trick is the fact that the melody remains unresolved in the verse. The verse kind of climaxes on the word “try” (listen at 0:19 or 0:32, for example), and that note, my friends, is unresolved. And it says right there in The Idiot Guide’s to Music Theory that “you don’t want to end your melody with unresolved tension.” (I kid you not; Google it.)

Well, you may not want to end the melody that way for good, but it’s pretty great when it sounds like you are ending it unresolved and then you wait all the way until the end of the chorus (which starts with the same melody) to arrive at resolution. I am fairly certain that the five guys in Your 33 Black Angels have not read The Idiot Guide’s to Music Theory.

“New Song” comes from the Brooklyn-based band’s self-released second CD, Tales of My Pop-Rock Love Life, which is due out next week.

Free and legal MP3: Gustav & the Seasick Sailors (jazz-tinged indie rock from Sweden)

“Homesick” – Gustav & the Seasick Sailors

Gustav & the Seasick Sailors return to Fingertips, after an almost three-year absence, with another piano-based, jazz-tinged composition. The drumming is soft and skittery, the chords open and Bruce Hornsby-esque, the melody brisk and wistful. The point at which this song settled into my psyche is right in the middle, the stretch from 1:20 to 1:28, when the melody picks up velocity and the chords progress with muted beauty, peaking at the lyrics “All the things we were/All the things we’re not.” The understated female harmony vocal here is beautiful, all the more so for sounding so casual and easy to overlook if you’re not paying attention.

“Homesick” is a song from Brilliant Hands, the third Gustav & the Seasick Sailors CD. Lead by Gustav Haggren, a singer/songwriter from Helsingborg, Sweden, the Seasick Sailors are labeled a “collective” by the band’s press material, which accounts for my inability to pinpoint, for instance, how many Seasick Sailors there happen to be. There seem to be five or six at the moment. And I don’t want to dwell on it but it’s interesting to know that Haggren was born without a right hand, and wears a special device that allows him to hold a pick and therefore play guitar.

The song “Nightlife” by GATSS was featured here in November 2005; it was also a #1 song on the Fingertips Top 10, for those keeping score at home.

Free and legal MP3: Annuals

Intricate, satisfying, melodic

“Confessor” – Annuals

Annuals prove yet again their capacity for producing intricate pop songs that defy standard structures while still offering catchy refrains and a satisfying sense of firm ground. “Confessor” develops upon two disparate rhythmic conceits: a stuttering, almost syncopated rhythm, which we hear for the first 26 seconds or so, accompanied by a melody featuring small intervals and drawn-out syllables; and a smoother, swaying beat, which you’ll hear for roughly the next 26 seconds. That second part features full-bodied vocal harmonies, a distinctive string section, and the song’s most prominent and inviting hook, starting around 0:30, which is the melody associated with the words “Through the windows in the chapel.” So the song’s a half-minute old, we’ve already experienced a how’d-that-happen? musical shift, and have come to a wonderful, old friend of a hook without quite knowing where we even are–verse? chorus? some mysterious other thing?

The somewhat XTC-like journey we’re on continues as the syncopation returns, the background music swells, and then–neat trick, around 1:21–we get the melodic hook overlaid onto the syncopated beat, aided and abetted by tight harmonies and a concise instrumental accompaniment, which feels full but not overcrowded. I like, after this, the swirling, climaxing instrumental section, and how it all but crashes ashore, wave-like, receding before the triumphant return of the “windows in the chapel” section. And with a few more swirly, wave-like swooshes, the song ends, less than three minutes after it has begun.

“Confessor” opens the new Annuals CD, Such Fun, which will be released next week on Canvasback Music, which is a Columbia Records spin-off. MP3 via Stereogum.

Free and legal MP3: Chris Flew (Glaswegian Americana with a killer melody)

“R + J” – Chris Flew

Does the world need another song about Romeo and Juliet? I wouldn’t have thought so. (Chris Flew himself probably didn’t think so; note the sly non-reference of the title.) And yet when a songwriter hits melodic pay dirt like Flew does with this stripped-down beauty, well, what the heck, one more musical Romeo and Juliet reference can’t hurt.

So maybe I’m a sucker for a simple melody but tell me this one doesn’t reach deep inside you also. And it comes at us right at the beginning: “I tried to understand as I touched your hand/What went wrong today?” A couple of ascending lines, describing a third interval, then the descending line that heads one further note down (to the word “wrong”), setting up the four-interval upward leap (from “wrong” to “today”). Simple, but awesome—it tugs at the heart, and sticks in the head. Building upon that rock-solid start, “R + J” proceeds from there with grace and inevitability. While the acoustic guitar strum remains at its core, Flew adds an evocative violin (probably better called a fiddle in this environment) and a distant lap steel guitar. No percussion used, or required. The lyrics may veer occasionally towards the obvious but Flew means well, and that affecting melody keeps returning and reaffirming the song’s strength.

Chris Flew is a Glaswegian singer/songwriter—that is, from Glasgow, Scotland, but don’t you like the word Glaswegian? More cities should have singular words for their residents, I say. “R + J” is from Flew’s most recent CD Kingston Bridge, self-released in 2006 and scheduled for a re-release this winter. Flew is currently working on a new CD. MP3 via Flew’s web site.

Free and legal MP3: Fulton Lights (scratchy, moody, beat-driven acousto-electronica)

“Sideways Glances and Coded Speech” – Fulton Lights

Andrew Spencer Goldman, the mastermind behind Fulton Lights, is back with another of his scratchy, moody, loose-limbed, beat-driven compositions. With the feel of something half-programmed and half-improvised, “Sideways Glances and Coded Speech” churns along with eerie personality; for all the echoey electronic noise that acts as the container here, the song is constructed just as notably from organic sounds, including acoustic guitar, upright bass (!), and what sounds to me like actual percussion in actual three-dimensional space. This beguiling sort of acousto-electronica fosters an unearthly vibe, which is neatly augmented by the presence of Goldman’s ghostly tenor, singing barely comprehensible but vaguely ominous phrases, floating along on top.

“Sideways Glances and Coded Speech” is a song from the second Fulton Lights CD, The Way We Ride, which was released earlier this month as a joint venture between Catbird Records and Goldman’s own Android Eats Records. The album is available for free download in its entirety via Catbird, although a pay-what-you-will payment is suggested. MP3 via Catbird.

Free and legal MP3 from Pale Young Gentlemen

Focused, theatrical indie pop, with strings and vigor

“The Crook of My Good Arm” – Pale Young Gentlemen

I love the musical and lyrical drama that Pale Young Gentlemen manage to pack into not even three minutes here. We first hear only a cello, playing a jerky line with what sounds like a mysterious rhythm until we understand that it’s actually just accelerating into the right tempo for the song. Kinda fun. A crisp acoustic guitar joins in, and a violin (or maybe a viola? or both?). By the time front man Mike Reisenauer sings those not-your-typical-indie-fare opening lines–“You start to worry ’bout your health/As you reach a certain age”–this song has achieved liftoff (aided by a drum that enters with exquisite timing).

And it’s really only just starting; the rest of the way, “The Crook of My Good Arm” all but explodes with melodic vigor and instrumental dexterity: the strings play rascally melodies and rhythms, a cowbell clangs at precisely the right moments, and Reisenauer, his voice vaguely processed, handles the theatrical rhyme scheme (check out the spiffy A-B-C-C-B pattern in the verse, leading into the titular phrase) with the casual authority of someone who’s more interested in telling a story than simply singing. Sounding nothing like rock bands that are typically associated with the word, I’d say that Pale Young Gentlemen (a seven-person outfit that includes by the way three women) possess great swagger. This isn’t “Wail on the electric guitar and scream bloody murder” swagger or “Dig my blues riff and my street cred” swagger or even “Be awed by my laptop skills” swagger–it’s “We know exactly what we’re doing and don’t really sound like anyone else” swagger. The best kind, in other words.

The Gents were previously featured on Fingertips in Nov. 2007. “The Crook of My Good Arm” is a song from the band’s second CD, Black Forest (Tra La La), which will be released next month on the Madison, Wis.-based label Science of Sound. MP3 via the band.

Free and legal MP3: The Bittersweets

Well-crafted alt-country, with great vocals

“Wreck” – the Bittersweets

Hannah Prater has a voice made to sing the words, “Why’d ya go and wreck this all?”: firm but with a little crack to it, at once bright and dusky, hurt and resilient and maybe a little existentially exasperated too. Why’d ya go and wreck this all? She’s sad, and disappointed, and pissed off, and her rich tone nicely captures the overlay of emotions independent, even, of what she’s saying. Over the Rhine fans should pay particular note; Prater sings with something of Karin Bergquist’s idiosyncratic verve, and “Wreck,” come to think of it, does have the vibe and polish of one of OTR’s smooth, capable rockers.

And make no mistake: smooth and well-crafted it is, from the gratifying melodies of the verse and the release of the chorus to the precisely played instrumental parts laid down by guitarist and keyboard player Chris Meyers (the group’s main songwriter) and drummer Steve Bowman (who has played with Counting Crows, among others). Interesting how the “indie” umbrella by 2008 gathers in everything from buzzy, jarring lo-fi to well-produced, radio-ready numbers such as the Bittersweets play. The irony, as music aficionados know, is that the internet all but overflows with radio-ready songs that few if any terrestrial radio stations are in fact ready to play. Blame deregulation in this case too; and I only wish that were a joke.

“Wreck” is from the Nashville-based trio’s second CD, Goodnight San Francisco, which was released this month on Compass Records. MP3 via Compass.

Free and legal MP3: Juana Molina (churning, hypnotic, expansive, ecstatic)

“Un Día” – Juana Molina

I suggest giving yourself some time and space to take this one in. Being in an altered state might help, although this song, if you open yourself to it, might help you achieve one.

A long-time Fingertips favorite, Molina returns with a crazy, churning, ecstatic daze of a song. The Argentinian former sitcom star has, as a musician, pioneered an alluring if evasive sort of folktronica, with lots of loops and repetition. “Un Día” is some of that, but also something else entirely. Despite how rigorously plotted out and worked over this sort of song construction probably is, Molina here sounds almost nuttily spontaneous and expansive, both musically and vocally. Ecstatic, yes: there seems something nearly spiritual in the air as Molina all but chants–her voice sounds freer, more unrestrained than in the past–against a marvelously textured and continually varying undercurrent of voice, electronics, horns, sounds, and percussion. As usual, for English-speaking listeners, the language adds another element of incomprehensibility, but she appears to be aiming in that direction in any case; one of the lyrics here, translated, reads: “One day I will sing the songs with no lyrics and everyone can imagine for themselves if it’s about love, disappointment, banalities or about Plato.”

“Un Día” is the title track from Molina’s forthcoming album, her fifth, due out next month on Domino Records. Can’t wait to hear the whole thing. MP3 via Stereogum.